With more than 100 games to his name, Mario isn't resting on his laurels, though – Super Mario Galaxy sees the plumber being transformed into a bee (not all the time, fortunately), and finding new levels by bounding from planet to planet through space, with gravity pulling him in every direction.

Shaking the Wii controller sends Mario into a spin attack; pointing the remote at the screen lets Mario collect stars.

"Mario has stayed popular because we always launch new technologies with him," says Miyamoto.

"He is now a spokesperson for each new style of digital entertainment."

Miyamoto is also confident that Sony and Microsoft haven't seen anything yet.

"There was a time when Nintendo was not influencing the world in the way it would have liked," he admits, referring to the lacklustre GameCube and Nintendo 64.

"That's why I've spent so much time trying to find new, exciting control systems we can use.

"My dream is that the Wii becomes this device everybody sees as being the natural thing to have next to the TV.

"So if you go over to somebody's house and they don't have one, you're like, “What – you have a TV but you don't have a Wii?”" With dreams like that, Mario looks set to be marching on for another quarter of a century.